Kathryn Shay - The Wrong Man For Her

Slouched in a chair far away from the group, Nato Keyes called out, “Yo, man. I don’t do writing.” The young black boy had been assaulted on the street and his assailant was awaiting arraignment. In the intake notes, Madelyn had indicated his anger seemed to be seething inside him. Nick hoped to bring it to the surface.

Nick picked up a different notebook from the stack and brought it to Nato. “I happen to have a journal without lines.” He also knew from the intake interview Nato was an artist. “You can draw or doodle entries. But you have to discuss some of them.”

“No shit?”

“Speaking of that, I’d prefer we keep the language clean in here. Even if it’s not your or my style.” He hoped including himself would ease the caveat.

“What about language in the journals?” Hector asked.

Since she needed to be included, Nick looked to Maddie. She said, “Anything’s fine by me in the journal, but I’d prefer you didn’t read aloud language that might make somebody else uncomfortable.”

“Can you guys live with that?” Nick asked.

“What if we can’t?” Hector’s mutinous expression was one Nick was familiar with. When he was the boy’s age, he’d perfected it.

“Por favor, el hermano,” Carla said softly.

So Hector was here for his sister. She might be his Achilles’ heel and Nick’s entry into his life.

Hector shrugged. “Sí, bien.”

Nick made eye contact with everybody but Kara, who wouldn’t look at him. Her file stated that she’d been beaten up by some girls in the school parking lot, but Madelyn had commented in her folder that something about her story didn’t ring quite true. Counselors paid attention to gut instincts.

Maddie asked, “Kara, this okay with you?”

“I guess.”

“Shamika?” Nick addressed the one girl who hadn’t yet spoken and was still fiddling with her cell phone. Overweight, with cornrows gracing her dark head, she was quiet, reports said. Which might explain why she spent most of her time on the computer and had become the victim of an online predator. He’d ended up being a level-three sex offender and had taken her halfway across the country before he was apprehended. He was back in jail now, as Shamika was under seventeen, the legal age of consent in New York.

Her face was impassive. “Yeah, no worries.”

“First entry, then. Write down what you’d like to get out of this group. Why you’re here. Anything specific you might want to do. You can read all or parts of it today to us. Any portion can be marked private, which means neither Madelyn nor I will read it. But you’ve got to share at least one thing. Also, put in what snacks you want to have this week.” He glanced at the clock. “Ten minutes. Madelyn and I will write, too, of course. We’ll never ask you to do something we wouldn’t do.”

“That’s a switch,” J.J. said.

“Not for me. It’s the way I operate.” Nick passed around the books. “I hope you’ll come to see that.”

“What about you, Dr. Walsh?” Tommy asked. “You gonna do what you ask us to?”

“Yes. I fully agree with everything Nick has said.”

Hmm. Now that was a switch.

J.J. WROTE FURIOUSLY in his journal.

Duh!! Like hell this is gonna be our group. Adults always say crap they don’t mean, like those assholes at school. My aunt’s okay, even though she looks at me like I walked off some Martian space craft. This guy’ll probably be like the ones at school. We’ll play some freaking games for a while, then he’ll make us do whatever he wants. The chick, too. She seemed cool at the intake interview, but that didn’t mean anything.

J.J. glanced up and saw the other kids writing. He looked at the posters on the wall. They were printed from the computer. The first showed statistics on teen victimization. It read:

Teens are twice as likely as adults to become victims of crimes.

58 per thousand of 16-to 19-year-olds are victimized.

46 per thousand of 12-to 15-year-olds.

Revictimization is 80% for teens who’ve been victimized once.

Right on, man. Nobody knew the number of times he’d been stuffed into lockers. Knocked against the wall. Doused with soda or water or whatever the frigging jocks had handy. Cripes, a couple of girls had even gotten into the act. His arm hurt like hell today, though the doc said it was healing. He wished his father were still alive. He could have helped. He was such a great guy… Even his mother would have been there for him. Now they were in long, cold graves. Sometimes J.J. wished he’d been with them on that rainy night when they’d skidded into a guardrail. He’d never even had a chance to say goodbye.

When the hole inside him threatened to gobble him up, he went back to the journal.

Anyway, what do I want from this place? How about pizza and beer for snacks? How about somebody to believe me? How about other kids who don’t look at me like I’m a weirdo?

He felt his eyes well with the dreaded moisture. Damn it, why had he let his aunt convince him to come here?

Because he was afraid she’d turn on him if he didn’t. Because he couldn’t stand how much he hurt inside and couldn’t handle the anger that never seemed to go away. These people might not be able to help, but they couldn’t make his life worse.

It couldn’t get any worse.

MADELYN FINISHED her journal entry about what she wanted to happen in this group. It wasn’t much different from what Nick had proposed, though she would have preferred the kids refer to her by her formal title. And she wouldn’t have thought to meet with them at a coffee shop.

“Time’s up.” Nick’s voice was clear and strong and confident. It even made her feel safe, and she knew better than to buy into his coaxing ways. “Let’s share some of our thoughts. Anybody want to start?”

No takers.

Madelyn jumped in. “I will.” She read from her first page. “I’d like to decorate the journal covers next time with something that reflects our personalities. Who we are. And I think we should do some ice-breakers then, too, to get us warmed up to talking about our feelings. I hope everybody will participate because that’s the only way to help each other. However, my vote is for a pass system, where we don’t have to share if we don’t want to.”

“That’s chunk,” Nato said. Madelyn had recently learned that chunk indicated approval.

Hector added, “Sí, Señora.”

Madelyn smiled at them. “But, guys, I don’t think we should be able to pass all the time.”

“I agree with that.” She looked over to see Nick had gone to the whiteboard again and had written down what she’d suggested.

Madelyn held up her journal. “The rest is for my eyes only.” She’d written about how difficult it was to be here with Nick.

“Did you do that?” Kara asked. “Write private stuff?”

“Yes.” She angled her head at the girl. “Kara, you know, adults don’t have it all together. We have issues.”

Nick stared at Madelyn. “We mess things up. We make bad decisions.”

“I guess I know that,” Kara said.

“Let’s go on.” Nick scanned the kids. “One of you want to start?”

Again, Anne Nguyen raised her hand.

“You can just speak out, Anne,” Nick told her.

“I want this all to be private from our parents.”

Nick wrote privacy on the board, then set down the marker. Sticking his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he leaned back on his heels. “I think your request is a key here. But I have to tell you some parameters. You can share feelings that you don’t want your parents to know about. But if either Madelyn or I sense you’re going to harm yourself or someone else, we can’t and won’t keep that private.”

“Will you tell Dr. Walsh what we talk about in private sessions?” Tommy asked.